LEVERETT — Professional expertise for increasing opportunities to develop affordable housing will soon be offered to Leverett officials.
Affordable Housing Trust Chairwoman Barbara Carulli informed the Select Board Tuesday that the town is working with the Franklin Council of Governments to create a regional affordable housing coordinator, who will assist the town with diversifying the housing stock.
“It’s starting small, but we’re the first town to do it,” Carulli said.
Mariah Kurtz, the new housing coordinator at FRCOG, will be helping the town. Carulli said ideas from this might include building small houses that could be affordable for families to buy or rent, or a complex of 55-and over homes.
Carulli said Leverett homes are almost uniformly too expensive to even meet the 100% area median income threshold that would classify them as being affordable.
The position is being created after FRCOG received a $10,000 grant from the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities for a partnership between Leverett, Shutesbury and Shelburne.
The Select Board also met with Sabra Billings, an independent candidate for state representative who is running for the position previously held by Natalie Blais, D-Deerfield.
Board members offered input to Billings, of Bernardston, on some of the topics they want addressed at the State House.
Board member Jed Proujansky said education funding is a “disaster” and legislators need to prioritize affordable healthcare and single-payer proposals put forward by Blais and Sen. Jo Comerford.
Chairwoman Patricia Duffy said she is concerned the state is making policies in which western Massachusetts communities are losing local control and being asked to meet the energy needs for Boston, such as through solar and battery storage projects. She compared this to how other area communities are asked to protect the Quabbin Reservoir watershed.
In other business, the board:
- learned that the 1.4-mile long drainage project on Dudleyville Road is winding down, with contractor Ludlow Construction Inc. having three more days of gravel work and doing some seeding along the road. Richard Nathhorst, a resident who has been a liaison for the project, said the “job’s finishing up nicely” and those who live on the road that connects Moore’s Corner to Shutesbury appreciate they don’t have to drive through mud to get to their homes;
- was informed that the town is being awarded a $250,000 grant that will match the $38,575 annual Town Meeting appropriated to buy and equip a road grader for the Highway Department;
- agreed to a $124,500 contract with Larochelle Construction of South Hadley to complete a covered stage that is part of a new outdoor space at the Leverett Library;
- put off a decision on forming a committee that will examine how to get money to make improvements at the historic Bradford M. Field Library building at 1 Shutesbury Road, with one possibility for funding being an application to the Community Preservation Act Committee by October;
- heard an appeal from Silas Ball of North Leverett requesting that the town end its involvement in a Land Court lawsuit over access to the Blueberry Patch conservation land off Shutesbury Road. Town Meeting approved spending money that will be used to build a new drivable path that will provide an alternate way to get onto the conservation land and could make the lawsuit involving the Evans-Marlowe family moot.
